


The One Hour Compromise

by thesilverarrow



Category: X-Men: First Class (2011) - Fandom
Genre: Hotel Sex, Jealousy, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-07-10
Updated: 2012-07-10
Packaged: 2017-11-09 14:09:18
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,534
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/456351
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thesilverarrow/pseuds/thesilverarrow
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>As soon as he steps into the motel room, Erik shoves the door closed and shoves him back against it.</i>
</p>
            </blockquote>





	The One Hour Compromise

**Author's Note:**

> Takes place during their big mutant-finding tour. In other words: motel sex. Half-drunk sex, too, if we're being technical. ;)

Charles always knows when Erik's especially tense. At those times, he, too, can feel the metal all around them. 

Erik has a propensity for using his mind to half-absentmindedly fiddle with things – rattle latches, shift knickknacks, spin flatware. When he's upset about something, though, he tends to simply _pull_ at things, just until they're at the point of giving, perhaps to reassure himself that they're there, that he's still him. As they walk down the hallway to the hotel room – _their_ room, now – Erik is so attuned to the metal around him that Charles can feel his own skin buzzing with it. He doesn't need to read the man's mind to divine that. 

He also doesn't need to skim his consciousness to know why he's clenching his jaw and flaring his nostrils. However, he does so anyway, if for no other reason than to stroke his own ego. That, and he can't quite believe it, really. But there it is: oh, yes, Erik was stupidly, achingly jealous that he'd been talking to that blonde girl at the bar. 

What had been her name? Kelly? All Charles remembers is she was a fellow scientist, against all probability, and she found his jokes amusing. She was not the one they'd come looking for; in fact, she had no mutant power whatsoever, which was something of a relief after their weeks of searching. 

Charles had set himself up at bar, downing pints of beer and meeting all the new people that stepped up to order a drink. Erik, meanwhile, nursed a double scotch and played pool with three of the roughest looking men in the place. This separation was its own kind of relief. Since they'd begun sleeping together, both literally and figuratively, their bickering had actually gotten worse. It's too tempting to give in to the electricity, now that they can. Unfortunately, that means they sometimes give themselves a nasty shock.

Tonight, the source of their problems is something simple: their girl doesn't turn up. Charles had wanted to wait, to unwind a bit since they were already there, but Erik wanted to go to bed.

"So go," Charles had said.

"What? So I can be jolted awake by your clumsy self in the small hours of the morning? No thank you. I'll stay out if you stay out."

"What? So I can be made miserable by your sulking in the corner?" He mimics Erik's facial expression as well as his tone: "No thank you."

"Compromise, then?"

"What?"

"One hour, and I promise not to sulk."

"An hour. Fine."

A few minutes ago, that hour was over. Right on schedule, Erik strode across the bar and wrapped a hand around his wrist.

"Time," he said, giving the girl a look that to everyone else in the bar seemed cold, dispassionate. To Charles, though, it was an obvious signal of barely concealed rage, one that said it was about to be the kind of evening in which Erik flicked open doors with a wave of his fingers and slammed them shut again without even looking at them.

Now that they've reached their room, however, Erik patiently waits for him to drag out the key, which shakes in his hand as he opens the door. As soon as he steps into the room, Erik shoves the door closed and shoves him back against it. Erik's two strong hands hold his face and his knee slides into place between his legs, so that he can press him into the door with his warm body, all sinewy muscle and controlled tension.

He looks into Erik's eyes only for a moment, but it's enough to make a shiver run through him. No, not an ounce of coldness here, just a scorching reprimand he can't bring himself to vocalize. That's the problem with them these days. So many topics are on the table, now that they have a deeper understanding between them, but other things are apparently too fragile to risk pushing, even nudging. While Charles isn't particularly worried that whatever this is will topple over and shatter into pieces, he can now clearly see that Erik is. 

Without prelude, Erik kisses him long and deep and wet, and Charles uses every ounce of his self-control to stay out of the man's head. Because if there was ever a kiss that meant to say something…

When Erik breaks away, he's panting softly, and he lets his forehead come to rest against Charles's. His hands, however, still clutch him tight, and he rocks his thigh into place against Charles's cock, which is already coming up hard.

"What was that?" Charles murmurs.

"I can ask you the same."

"We English call that kissing. I don't know what you—"

"Charles." Erik finally lets go of him, stepping back and raking a hand through his hair. He sits down on the end of the bed before he mumbles, "You know what I mean."

Charles smiles, aiming for a wry quirk of the mouth rather than the full-on grin that threatens. 

"Oh, you mean how you were ridiculously jealous earlier, and you're also apparently woefully misinformed about how to punish me for it?"

Erik lies back on the bed with a flop. "I guess there _are_ advantages to having sex with a telepath."

"More than you know," he says with a roguish smile. "But it doesn't require anything more than my regular human powers of observation to realize that your blood pressure was going through the roof because that waif of a girl had her hand on my arm. I'm sure you won't believe me when I say I wasn't after anything from her. "

"I know you weren't." 

"Good. Because I don't mean to flirt."

"No, it's just how you are. With everybody."

"Especially when I'm a bit pissed. Which I am."

"I am, too."

"You do know that in the Queen's English _pissed_ means _drunk_ , not _angry_."

At that, Erik snorts, turning his head so that Charles can see the sardonic smile coming over his face.

"Yes, I do know."

"Good. Because you seem like you're pissed enough for both of us."

"I hold my liquor just fine."

"You do. But you normally hold back more than this."

"Hold back?"

"You think you scare me, but you don't. If anything, I'm more likely to flirt in the future, if it gets this kind of reaction."

"You wouldn't dare."

"You know that I would."

Suddenly, Erik sits up, growling, "Get over here."

Once Charles is on the bed, crawling up over his body, Erik doesn't waste any time throwing a leg over his and using the leverage to reverse their positions. He holds Charles's hands up over his head as he grinds their hips together, and the rough pressure sends a jolt of arousal through Charles, one that grows into a maddening tension because of the weight of Erik's body.

"Get that off," Erik says, gesturing at Charles's shirt as he sits up and hastily jerks his own jumper over his head. Charles is still working at buttons when Erik stretches out over him again, his strong hands turning and holding Charles's head in place so he can suck and bite at his neck. Then his mouth moves steadily lower, finally latching onto one of his nipples. Charles's back bows up off the mattress. 

"Really," Charles says, "we've got to – ah – work on your – fuck – ideas about punishment."

"If this were punishment," he says, his mouth now against Charles's throat again, "I'd have you on your knees."

Charles makes an inarticulate whining noise, which only grows louder when Erik nips at the skin beside his Adam's apple.

Erik adds, "This is me reminding you how good you have it."

"How good?"

"I don't know. That depends on what you think about me fucking you into this mattress."

Erik jerks his hips and Charles's legs fall open. And his mouth. "Very," he gasps out. "God, very good."

"Later, maybe." Erik is tugging at his belt with one hand, and the other jerks open his zipper to he can get a hand inside. "But, just now, I'm not feeling particularly patient."

Without quite meaning to, Charles skims the surface of Erik's thoughts, just enough to know it will be helpful if he sets to work on Erik's button and zipper, too. Soon, they're inelegantly sprawled across the bed, trousers around their ankles, skin to skin and rutting against each other. Erik grips the headboard tightly, and Charles's body bows up off the bed to get more friction, a tighter press of bodies, a better angle – 

And there it is.

"Christ," Charles moans.

Erik just groans, and soon he's grunting with every thrust, as though they're actually fucking. They've only done that a couple of times yet, but Charles can remember the sensation of Erik's cock breaching him, his length sliding home, of Erik's thighs forcing his apart at every thrust and the wild look in his eyes when he came.

This time, it's Charles's eyes that are wild. His orgasm catches him off guard and leaves him groaning and jerking and panting into Erik's neck as he spills between them, making their thrusts slicker and more erratic. 

Once Charles is spent, Erik sits up on his knees and takes himself in hand. Before long, he's coming in hot spurts on Charles's chest. 

After some cursory clean up involving discarded clothing they probably can't afford to soil, they collapse back onto the bed. Only then does Erik take Charles's face in his hands again, to kiss him hard and long on the mouth. Erik likes kissing. A lot. Charles sometimes finds himself impatient with the man's oral fixation, but tonight he's content to lie there and snog his stupidly stubborn bedmate until they fall asleep. That might've actually been possible if they weren't both somewhere between tipsy and sobering. 

Charles can already feel his head start to pound, so he finally gets up and goes to the bathroom to drink a glass of water and clean up more thoroughly. When Erik joins him, he gives him a half-sheepish smile in the mirror as Charles leaves the room.

By the time Charles is settled again, Erik's flicking off the light, prepared to join him again. He stops in the bathroom doorway and looks down at Charles quizzically. His eyes shine in the light from the street lamp, filtering in through the worn curtains.

Erik says softly, "You weren't even irritated with me, were you?"

"No."

"But I was angry."

"Not truly. Not real anger."

Now, Erik finally comes back to bed. Shifting into a comfortable position on his back, he murmurs, "It's possessive bullshit, anyway." 

"Luckily, I can tell the difference between mistrusting a person and simply being adorably territorial."

Erik rolls over and kisses him firmly, saying against his mouth, "You are not my territory."

"If you say so."

Erik pulls back a bit from him, so he can look him in the eye. "We've never talked about…"

Charles sighs. "I hadn't thought we actually needed to have that conversation, love."

"Apparently we do. I have no idea what…this is."

"All I know is it had better involve a bit of sobering up, because I think I'm too dizzy for further acrobatics at the moment."

"You know what I mean."

Talking at the ceiling now, Charles says, "No, I don't, actually. That's sort of the problem."

"I know."

"Things have been…"

"Yeah."

Charles swallows hard and closes his eyes. "Look, I can only tell you about me. First, I don't usually jump into bed with someone I can't imagine facing up to the next morning – and the next, and the one after that. Which is not to say I actually have to do it, mind you, just that I have to have that kind of…connection with someone. And second, I absolutely don't slink round to several people's beds at once. That's me. What _you_ want, how you see this, is up to you."

Erik lays a finger across his jaw to turn his head, so he can meet his gaze when he says, "No, it's not. And it shouldn't be. If that tells you what you need to know." 

Charles raises his head long enough to press a kiss to Erik's lips. 

"Okay, then," he says, reclaiming him with his arms, to cling to him as tightly as he can. 

He's almost asleep, lulled by the slowing and evening of Erik's breathing, when a thought occurs to him.

"Hey."

"Hmm?"

"Let me show you something."

He lets the events of the evening flood his mind, and when he settled on his conversation with the girl, he lets Erik see exactly what he'd been attuned to. She's definitely an attractive girl, in her way, and he had fully engaged his academic self in order to charm her, brainiac to brainiac. A part of his brain, and more importantly his roaming eyes, however, never quite lost tabs on the gorgeous, lanky man pacing the other side of the barroom.

Erik raises his eyebrows as he tries to tamp down a ridiculous grin. 

"You were seriously staring at my backside the whole time?"

"Not literally the whole time, but, yes. You have a fantastic arse, and you were putting it on display quite a lot, all those long shots down the table. If anyone should be jealous, it's me, really."

"I wasn't playing pool with a leggy blonde."

"No, but you drew the attention of every woman in the room, and not a few men."

Erik just snorts.

Charles asks, "Why don't you play pool with me?"

"Because you hate pool."

"I do not. I just don't know how to play."

"I can teach you."

"I think I will enjoy that very much," he replies, climbing on top of Erik and crushing their mouths together. When he finally rolls off him and onto his back again, the room is spinning a bit. Apparently, he's not sobering as quickly as he thought.

"Next time," he says, "I think the one hour rule is less important than the one drink rule."

"Lightweight."

"Horse's ass."

They lay there silently for a time, listening to the noisy world around them, happy to be soaking up a few minutes' peace. Suddenly, Erik gropes with his hand until he finds Charles's. 

"I'm yours, you know."

Charles wants to say all sorts of things – about how sure about this he is, how happy it makes him, how Erik doesn't need to say these things for Charles to understand. But in his surprise, all he can manage is an affirmative murmur before he raises Erik's hand to his lips and kisses it.

Then, a moment later, he mutters, "Stop fiddling with the taps."

"Sorry."

Another moment passes, then Erik says, "You know, a shower sounds really nice."

"Go for it."

As Erik heads into the bathroom, he pauses and says, "You're still a bit dirty, too, yeah?"

Charles blinks his eyes open. He doesn't have the energy to be clever, but he hopes he has the energy to keep on his feet. More importantly, maybe, the coordination.

"Yeah," he replies, rolling himself up off the bed very, very carefully.


End file.
